On the question of Capital Exports was RE: Arms production + Dept III

[Adam Rose <adam@xxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for this contribution.

Can I summarise you as saying that in 1925, the flow of profits from
investments abroad exceeded the flow outwards into productive capital
abroad, and that therefore capital was not being exported ?

If not, could you spell it out in words of one syllable.
Thanks.

i) 1925 is not a very good year to produce statistics for -
eg 1855,1875,1895 would be better.

By 1925, Imperialism was in deep crisis ( the age of classical
Imperialism ended in 1914, at the very latest ). I would expect
the rate of profit to be plunging at a rate of knots,
to use a technical expression.

I can't provide statistics, but I don't see statistics for 1925 as helpful,
except perhaps as strengthening my argument - by 1925, the export of
capital in net terms had stopped, and the system was in crisis.

ii) Sure, the reason individual capitalists exported productive capital
was so that they could happily live as rentier capitalists, as Lenin
calls them, in other words, precisely so that the export of productive
capital would, for this individual capitalist, be exceeded by the
receipts from dividends, interest, appreciation etc.

Some of these profits would indeed go on luxury consumption of the ruling
class, which also offsets the falling rate of profit ( although I definitely
would not put taxes in this category - taxes have the same effect as the
state owning shares in the colonies ).

But I would still assert that during the age of Classical Imperialism
more Capital went out than came in, and it went out in the form of
capital goods and came back in the form of dividends etc.

You may rightly point out that I have no evidence for this, except
point (iv).

It was no doubt the case that as the Imperialists got their hands on a colony,
official or otherwise, after a while, this colony itself became a net exporter
of capital. This capital went via the metropolis back to a new, less developed
colony, as long as such places could be found. By about 1910, the Imperialists
had more or less run out of new places to go, or at least the size of the new
markets that could be opened up became negligible in relation to the amount
of capital it needed to absorb ( India + China don't exactly compare with,
say, Ethiopia ).

iii) You still have to explain the fact that there are British Railways
in India and Argentina, and not the other way round.

iv)

> Adam remarked that when Lenin wrote about Imperialism
> no one saw his description of Imperialism as exporting
> capital as in any way controversial - it was just a
> description of the world he lived in, and which
> everyone recognised.

> He may be right that no one saw this as controversial,
> without a through review of the economic and socialist
> literature of the day, it is impossible to say for
> sure, but it has to be born in mind that the intellectual
> atmosphere in the Communist International was not
> conducive to a critical analysis of Lenin's economic
> writings.

This is a bit of cheap shot. What I meant was that Lenin in economic
terms was summarising the work of Marxist and Bourgeois economists
during the time of the 2nd international - but drew 3rd International
conclusions politically.

He simply wasn't innovating in this respect, he was operating within the
concensus, bourgeois + Marxist, at the end of the age of Imperialism,
say 1900 - 1914.

Thanks again for your contribution.

Adam.

Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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